Fifteen by Frederic

[Cole Parker]

I've only read a couple of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels (wherein, it should be noted, the lead character is much less the noble and virtuous guy we saw on television) but I imagine the same issue must have come up for him as well. On the TV show there were enough external forces to keep things moving -- Ray Collins became ill, then Bill Talman was dropped after CBS invoked the morals clause in his contract, then Raymond Burr's ongoing health problems flared up seriously and we had a stellar procession of guest stars like Bette Davis, Walter Pidgeon, Hugh O'Brien, Michael Rennie, and others taking center stage. So even though the stories were often a bit on the hokey side there was enough variety that it didn't become stale.

Back to the original issue, though: I have to say that I thoroughly agree with the many folks who have said they would love to continue following the characters after a story's end. Intellectually I understand the argument as to why not, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

R

Oh, that's very true. I feel the same way. I would have loved to follow Scout and Jem a little further into their lives. What I was explaining was why many authors don't write sequels, even though, if you're published, that's where the money is.

I loved the first few of Lee Child's Reacher books. The last few have been very weak imitations of the first ones. I'm not sure that it isn't inevitable.

C

[JamesSavik]

Sometimes sequels seem artificial. They just don't ring true.

I'm not sure what it is that makes the good ones fit together so well. I guess it's just some kind of magic.

I am trying my hand at that and I'll see how it works.

I've written two stories for the GA anthology:

The Place in Between came first.

Getting to the Happily Ever After was next.

The final installment in this series is called Nightfall. It's already written and it will debut at GA in about a week and here 2 weeks later by rules of the anthology.

I was scared of writing Nightfall. Writing it was hard but necessary.

I think this little trilogy works very well.

[Graeme]

On the subject of sequels, I'm currently working on my first one. I've had requests for sequels/continuations for my other novels, but my response has always been that I won't write a sequel unless I have a plot and a decent ending. Since I usually put all my efforts into the first story, I don't have a lot of ideas left for a second....

[Frederic]

Greetings, all. I've finally found time to sort through these threads, and, bigger head still a bit swollen with pride, I thought I might add a couple of thoughts, particularly about the matter of the narrator's "voice."

Cole writes: we try hard not to make the voice our own, not to slip into speech patterns we use.

This would be especially true if the "voice" belonged to a serial killer, a NASCAR driver, or a beautician on the lam -- none of which I have ever been (although I once put on make-up). Nothing kills a story more quickly than a narrator who doesn't sound authentic, or at least well-researched.

But in every story I've submitted to this site, no matter how much braver, funnier, sexier, and younger he is than I am in reality, the narrator's "voice" is in so many ways my own. If it works for the reader -- if Aidan ("Fifteen") or Miguel ("Still Life w/Three Boys") are worth spending time with -- then I suppose I can live with the ugly truth that I'm an extremely self-absorbed writer taking the good habit of recycling to extremes. I actually sort of talk like they do in real life, and I'm simply channeling myself when I write them.

I once asked a basketball player I coached what he thought his biggest weakness was: "my strength," he answered. "My biggest weakness is my strength." Now, out of the mouths of babes and all, and I don't think he was getting Zen on me, but in a way he captured what I sometimes think about my fiction: its biggest weakness is its strength, that is, my narrators are all so terribly verbal that they tend to overwhelm the storyline. They can't seem to get out of their own way.

Maybe I ought to write a gay NASCAR story -- at least all the drivers would be past the age of consent. But I don't know where the camshaft is, and I don't drink milk.

[Lugnutz]

That's my realm. One not touched by others normally.

[Cole Parker]

Frederick wrote:

I actually sort of talk like they do in real life, and I'm simply channeling myself when I write them.

But he left out two words at the end of that sentence: with modifications. Because he doesn't use his vocabulary when he writes in kid voices. That's probably a problem we all have, because kids don't use the words we use. We have to dumb down what we say or it won't be a bit authentic. Granted, Frederic, you may not dumb it down a whole lot. I have an editor who constantly complains my protagonists sound like Oxford dons, so perhaps I don't dumb mine down enough, either.

We can't use our full vocabularies when we write. More's the pity.

C